Message from the Director

Welcome to the University of Illinois Micro and Nanotechnology Laboratory (MNTL), one of the country's largest and most sophisticated university facilities for conducting photonics, microelectronics, biotechnology, and nanotechnology research. MNTL is a crown jewel of the College of Engineering. It is the place where campus researchers and visiting scientists come to design, build, and test innovative nanoscale technologies with feature sizes that span the range of atoms to entire systems.

Originally opened in 1990 as the Microelectronics Laboratory, MNTL was widely known for its excellence in III-V compound semiconductor device and processing research. An $18 million state-funded expansion in 2008 broadened our mission and capabilities to address challenges at the intersection of engineering and biology.

Today our world-leading faculty and innovative students are engaged in research that addresses many of the most pressing challenges facing our society. Applications include high-speed data communications, high efficiency lighting, solar power, flexible electronics, biomedical imaging, biomedical diagnostics, new tools for life science research, environmental monitoring, novel microelectronics/photonics concepts for next-generation computing architectures, and many more. With the state-of-the art tools for micro/nanotechnology fabrication, materials metrology, and device characterization within MNTL, we are limited only by the extent of our imagination.